Taking You Out To The Ballgames

Today, TigerBlog takes you out to the ballgames.

First, there was the Princeton softball team, which took two of three this weekend from Dartmouth to end up in a tie with Harvard for the Ivy League championship. Because Princeton took two of three from Harvard during the regular season, Princeton will be the top seed and host for the first Ivy tournament, which is in two weekends, in Princeton. 

The Tigers will be joined by Harvard, Yale and Columbia. 

Princeton needed to take two from Dartmouth to get a share of the title because Harvard swept Columbia. The weekend started ominously for Princeton, who lost the first game in Hanover 7-0. Now the Tigers had to sweep a team that had some momentum, which as you know in baseball and softball is only as good as your next pitcher.

In this case, it was Molly Chambers, who pitched all seven innings, allowing one run on six hits while striking out three in a 4-1 win. That set up Saturday's game, and for a while it looked like the Tigers might coast, especially when Allison Ha blasted a grand slam in the fifth inning to give Princeton an 8-1 lead. It became 10-1 by the end of the inning. 

In softball, an eight-run or better lead after five ends the game. Princeton needed three outs — but Dartmouth got six runs, and then one more in the sixth. Suddenly it was 10-9, but that would be where it would stay, as Alexis Laudenslager, who had started the game, came back in for the bottom of the seventh, allowing a single but getting two strikeouts and a ground out to end it. 

For Princeton, it's the 21st Ivy softball championship in program history. 

And then there was the baseball team.

TigerBlog referred to the Princeton baseball team last week as "Bradley's Wallbangers," an homage to the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers.

If you don't know, the ’82 Brewers made it to the World Series, losing in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals. The team made a managerial change in midseason, promoting hitting coach Harvey Kuenn when the team was a game below .500 in June. From that point, the Brewers took off, led by a powerhitting lineup that earned the nickname "Harvey's Wallbangers." 

Apparently, a Harvey Wallbanger is a cocktail made with vodka, Galliano (which also the name of TB's friend Corey's dog when they were kids) and orange juice. The last mixed drink TigerBlog had featured milk and chocolate syrup, but he digresses.

Bradley's Princeton team has more than earned the nickname of "Wallbangers," as it has rewritten the Princeton record book with its home run prowess. Every game it seems like the Tigers have been bashing the ball over whatever fence happens to be around, and the result has been a rise to near the top of the Ivy League standings.

Because of the weather, Princeton played a doubleheader Friday at Yale and led off Game 1 with a home run courtesy of Matt Scannell. Business as usual? 

Hardly. Scannell's homer was the only one Princeton would hit in 18 innings between the two games. It also equaled the total number of runs that Yale would score in the two games combined. One.

In fact, Yale would get only five hits in the game, and all five of those came in Game 1. Princeton's Tom Chmielewski went all the way on a five-hit shut out, striking out 10 and walking none. He threw 104 pitches on the day. Final score: Princeton 8, Yale 0.

Surely that would be Princeton's best-pitched game of the day, right? Well, it might have been. It was a shutout. It was a complete game. What it wasn't was a no-hitter.

That came in Game 2.

Princeton had three pichers combine to hold the Bulldogs without a hit, though the home team did get one run on a sixth-inning sacrifice fly. Jackson Enus, Jacob Faulkner and Justin Kim combined on the no-hitter. Final score: Princeton 9, Yale 1.

That's an amazing day of pitching. That's 18 innings, five hits, one run, 22 strikeouts, four walks. Does it get much better than that? 

Princeton's wins clinched a spot in the upcoming Ivy League tournament. How is that?

Right now, the standings have Penn and Harvard at 13-5 each, followed by 12-5 Princeton. Columbia is 11-7, and Yale is 8-9. The best Yale can be is 12-9 (beating Princeton and sweeping Harvard), which is also the worst Princeton can be, and the Tigers have already secured the head-to-head tiebreaker over Yale with the two wins. Princeton also swept Columbia, so if it comes to be a three-way tie at 12-9 with Princeton, Yale and Columbia, Princeton would have the best record among the three head-to-head.

Of course, a win today creates a three-way tie for the top with one weekend remaining. To end the regular season, Princeton will host Brown, Harvard will host Yale and Penn will host Columbia.